I’m getting really confused by my bank (Chase) … when presented with a customer who has been with them for a number of decades (through 2 or 3 incarnations), and who WANTS to keep an account open with them … they won’t waive a $200 fee.
Here are a few things that I recommend for folks who use PC’s … think of them as “David’s Rules for PC Owners” …
Second half of the vacation is done … this time it was to the “Big Island” of Hawaii (which is named Hawaii, just to confuse us).
We did get some snorkeling in … but not as much as we would have liked to. Did a bit of exploring, no geocaching, and very little hiking.
The condo we stayed in was not nearly as nice as the one we had on Kauai … it was larger (much larger), but not nearly as nicely maintained. We asked for a upper level unit … and boy, did we get what we asked for. The condo’s entrance was on the 2nd floor of the building, but then there was a huge stairway to get to the main living area. The bedroom was another flight of stairs up. This unit is *NOT* accessible by people with handicaps.
One other thing of note about the condo … the complex is huge and an incredible maze. The 2nd night Ginny and I decided to exploring after dark … and got very lost. I should have brought my GPS. It wasn’t until the last few days that we actually got a handle on where we were.
We attended a Luau on Thursday … and were very unimpressed. Ginny did a pretty good write up on it on her blog. The food was mediocre, performance dry, but my biggest problem was the excessive religious references.
Our snorkel trip was with an outfit called Sea Paradise they weren’t bad. Not as polished as some of the other places, but they had all the important stuff. I was a bit disappointed that the catamrain’s mast had been taken down for maintenance, but sailing on those trips is mostly for show. There were less than 20 people on the cruise and all adults, so we didn’t have to deal with kids running around. They took us to two snorkel spots (first one was great, 2nd one was so-so). Got a few pictures. Since Ginny wanted a reasonably good underwater camera, I got a new one (Canon SD770 IS) and gave her the Canon A75 … unfortunately the A75 developed a glitch that caused the sensor to act weirdly. I’ll probably have to get her a replacement camera. The underwater housing is fine, so there’s no need to replace it. We also snorkeled at a beach park … which wasn’t bad, but the water was WAY too shallow for my tastes.
Maybe it’s because it’s winter … but the water on both Kauai and the big island seems very rough. And the big island doesn’t have a lot of beaches. We had planned on snorkeling at ‘Two Step’ (named because you get into the water with two steps), but never got around to it.
We had a number of good meals … the food at at Kenichi, which is a sushi / asian fusion restaurant, was good but the service was bad. I ordered an rice appetizer but didn’t get it until after the main course. We also ate at Jameson’s By The Sea, which was pretty good. Good food & service.
We did, however, cook in quite a bit … which may seem an odd thing to do on vacation, but that’s why we like renting condos. You (usually) get all the facilities you’re used to at home … refrigerator, stove, dishwasher, clothes washer, dryer, etc. The only issues are that a) often you don’t get all the supplies you need. Things like laundry soap, condiments (ketchup, soy sauce, olive oil, etc), sometimes even dishwasher soap and b) You don’t always get all the appliances you might want. Things like coffee grinder, rice cooker, etc (actually, lack of a rick cooker in Hawaii is very odd … but we’ve encountered it).
We went out to Volcano National Park on Wednesday … very long drive. Unforunately the volcano wasn’t flowing. Apparently the sea vent tends to stop and start. The best way to be sure you’re going out when it’s flowing is to check the HVO … but we didn’t know about that at the time. Since it’s such a long drive, on roads that are not well lit, we decided not to go out on Friday (we would have gotten back well after 11pm and our flight was the next day). We drove around the park a bit, had a very disappointing lunch at the park lodge, did a little bit of hiking, and headed home.
One thing that was a disappointment was that we coudln’t get on one of the ‘eco tours’ to Manaloa for star gazing. We tried to book one, but they were full until after we left. Next time we’re going to book that well before we arrive.
As with Kauai, the Big Island wasn’t quite what we were hoping for … but we did enjoy ourselves. We’ll be back at some point … but, again, probably in the summer instead of winter.
Nest time we’re going to Maui.
We’re on the road again … well, more the plane again.
For the past week we’ve been vacationing in Hawaii … first stop: Kauai.
We’ve been to Kauai in the past … only for a short time, and it was kind of a screwed up vacation. I got a sinus infection the first day. On that trip Kauai had been kind of cool … even cold at night.
Well this trip is somewhat better … no sinus infection, but it wasn’t much warmer. Mid 70’s during the day, low 60’s at night.
Although we’ve done some fun stuff this trip … I’m not sure I’m all that interested in returning.
In recent months the credit card companies (Chase & Discover, mostly) have ramped up their efforts to get me to use “Convenience Checks”. Almost every statement includes a batch of them.
I’ve never liked the fact that they send them … first, and foremost, because I never use them. Secondly, I consider them a serious security risk. If someone rifles through my mailbox (which has no security) and grabs my statement, they could easily cash the checks. Yes, I know I probably wouldn’t be liable for the amount … but it would be a major pain to figure out what was going on.
I finally got around to calling both Chase and Discover to request that my account be flagged so I never get Convenience Checks again.
In both cases, the customer service person I talked to understood my concerns … and updated my account appropriately. I was warned that there might be one ore two more mailings sent out, as the convenience checks are setup in advance … but I can deal with that.
Hmmm … now that I think about it a bit … that doesn’t really make sense … at least in the case of Discover … because the checks are attached to my statement, which is clearly custom printed on demand at the end of my billing cycle.
Oh well, as long as they don’t send me more than 1 or 2 more batches, I’ll be happy.
Thursday, I had a very disturbing experience with Tivo customer service.
In the past, on the rare instances where I had to call Tivo’s customer service department, I’ve always had a very pleasent experience … my problem or question was cleared up right away with minimum of fuss & bother.
Last Thursday, however, that trend was broken … not once, but twice.
We had dinner at the new Ti Amo restaurant, in Hoffman Estates, tonight.
It took the place of Babaluci, which we liked a lot. We were very disappointed when we saw they had closed.
Unfortunately, I was not especially impressed with the replacement.
I ordered Gnocchi with a side dish of Pasta Fagioul soup.
The soup was kind of bland, and looked like someone had used a stick blender to mix it up. There was almost no pasta in it.
The Gnocchi was mushy, with bland-tasting sauce. When I ordered the same dish at Babaluci, the Gnocchi had nice texture and the sauce was chunky, with nice pieces of tomato.
Ginny had a duck & pasta dish with a minestrone soup. Her soup also looked like it had been mixed with a stick blender. The duck was a bit gamier than she was expecting, and the noodles were too wide to be eaten easily.
The atmosphere, while OK, wasn’t anything to write home about. We liked the homey feel that Babaluci had. Of course, we were fairly regular and were always greeted warmly.
I noticed a distinct lack of seafood dishes on the menu..which is a big disappointment for me.
Price wise they seem to be a bit higher than I would expect, but not overly so. Ginny and I spent about $40 for dinner with tea to drink.
Ti Amo is probably worth another shot, but we’ll wait a few months for them to find their legs.
For quite some time I haven’t been happy with the level of data protection on my servers … a while ago I ran mirrored (RAID 1) IDE (PATA) drives on my system using a Arco Duplidisk adapter. It seemed adequate, but after I upgraded my servers to the Dell PowerEdge systems, it didn’t seem to work quite right. It was reporting failed drives when there were none.
So, after a fair bit of research, I decided to get a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. My criteria were a) had to support various RAID levels (1 & 5 at least), have hot swappable drives, and support NFS (the linux network file system).
The device I decided on is a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+. The model I got came with 2 x 500gb drives, with bays for two more. It wasn’t cheap, but I think it will be worth it in the long run.
It supports various RAID levels … RAID 1 (mirroring, where the data on one drive is completely duplicated on the other), RAID 5 (where data is stored on two drives with a parity bit on the 3rd … if any one of the drives fails, the data can be reconstructed on the fly using two of the drives), and it’s own RAID X … which is an eXpandable and adaptive RAID variation … which will use RAID 1 if you only have two drives, and RAID 5 when you add more.
Although there were a few hiccups, I’m not displeased.
Jason Kottke pointed out that the whitehouse.gov robots.txt file was changed almost immediately after the inauguration …
It went from this …
User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin Disallow: /search Disallow: /query.html Disallow: /omb/search Disallow: /omb/query.html Disallow: /expectmore/search Disallow: /expectmore/query.html Disallow: /results/search Disallow: /results/query.html Disallow: /earmarks/search Disallow: /earmarks/query.html Disallow: /help Disallow: /360pics/text Disallow: /911/911day/text Disallow: /911/heroes/text
… to this …
User-agent: * Disallow: /includes/
Web site owners use the /robots.txt file to give instructions about their site to web robots; this is called The Robots Exclusion Protocol.
One small step towards the new attitude of openness and transparency.
I was just reading Obama’s Inaugural address and one of the phrases he used jumped out at me …
To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.
… which reminded me of a line from the David Roth‘s (the folk singer) song “Dragon to Butterfly” which has the line …
A man can move mountains, a world can be turned, and the greatest of distances easily spanned, When the strength that’s invested in making a fist is transformed into shaking a hand.
I like the symbolism in both.